Communications in Humanities Research ISSN: 2753-7072
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Research Article

How Transnational Digital Platforms Respond to Trust Crises under National Security Narratives: The Case of TikTok

Kaiyi YanThe Chinese University of Hong Kong*

* Corresponding author: [email protected]

Abstract

This paper uses TikTok as an example to examine how national security narratives shape transnational digital platform trust crises. The research focuses on the controversies on TikTok in Sino-US media and political debate, analyzing how cross-border data flows, algorithmic recommendation, platform ownership and geopolitical tensions translate into public concerns regarding risks and legitimacy. The empirical basis is a preliminary content analysis on 51 news reports published by six Chinese and American media outlets between 2022 and 2025. The study encoded three dominant frames: security threats, business competition, and technological innovation, as well as five information source types: government, business, experts, the public, and international sources. This study employed descriptive statistics, cross-tabulation analysis, chi-square tests, exploratory logistic regression, and case studies to identify key narrative patterns. The results show that security frames dominate the sample, particularly in US media, and that government sources are closely related to security frames. This paper argues that TikTok's trust criss stems from geopolitical securitization, elite information source dominance, technological opacity and the users and creators' invisibility. Future research should expand the corpus, improve inter-coder reliability and compare TikTok with other politically controversial platforms.

Keywords: TikTok; Platform Governance; National Security Narratives; Media Framing; Source Dependence
Published: August 18, 2026
DOI: 10.54254/2753-7064/2026.36252
Volume: CHR Vol.117
pp. 56-69
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